Consider the language of 'Romeo and Juliet' and comment on the contribution to the plays success of Shakespeare's use of metaphor and simile, repetition and punning. Illustrate your answer with careful reference to the text

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Julia Cloke

“Gibson says that Shakespeare, “brilliantly transformed whatever he worked on”, through his use of language.

Consider the language of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and comment on the contribution to the plays success of Shakespeare’s use of metaphor and simile, repetition and punning. Illustrate your answer with careful reference to the text”.

        Shakespeare was fascinated by language. Throughout the play ‘Romeo and Juliet’, he uses words a tools to do his work and conjure images of every different emotion. Shakespeare unleashes the whole spectrum of emotions, always having at least two scenarios for each scene. These usually come from the characters and ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is rich in many different uses of language.

        The play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is full of oppositions that beset the doomed lovers. In the prologue, we hear of an, “ancient grudge break to new mutiny.” A clever use of language, oxymorons, highlight these oppositions.

        An oxymoron is usually a phrase, divided into two parts. Each part is contradictory to the other and the result is a phrase of striking expression. An example of this would be, “O loving hate.” The words love and hate are opposite emotions, so when placed together they emphasise and heighten the feelings of Romeo, who is describing his love for Rosalind and Rosalind’s failure to return his affections. Oxymorons are very useful for describing these contradictory states of feeling that people often experience in times of excitement, crisis, and stress.

        In Act 3 Scene 2 Juliet finds out about Tybalts death and that her lover, Romeo, is the murderer. She uses several oxymorons to help describe her torn emotions for Romeo,

“Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical! Dove-feathered raven,

wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show!”

Juliet is battling with her feelings and doesn’t know what she thinks of Romeo anymore. All of the words to do with love and beauty and innocence describe the man she feel in love with, the Romeo she first met at the Capulet’s ball. Now she had seen a side to Romeo that she didn’t know existed and she cannot bring herself to believe that the man she knows as so gentle and caring could be the same man who shed the blood of her kinsmen. “Tyrant…fiend…despised substance,” are all a reflection of Juliet’s anger.

        The single oxymoron, “beautiful tyrant,” describes Romeo’s looks. She questions how something as beautiful as Romeo could possibly hide an evil reality. Surely, appearance reflects personality. Yet Romeo’s actions have defied all of Juliet’s beliefs, his tyrannical side has emerged, though it is almost impossible for Juliet to see how.

        The atmosphere created in one of tension within her, her two sides of contrasting emotions overruling her head and causing great anguish for Juliet. Through her anger and mourning Juliet must somehow find the strength to stand alone, as she has no one to share her thoughts with. The Nurse cannot see this and is concerned only with her own bereavement of Tybalt, as her heart begins to mourn. Indeed the two women’s contrasting reactions are themselves a kind of dramatic oxymoron. As they are the only characters in this scene, the reader is quickly absorbed into the heart of the drama, which lasts the duration of Act 3 Scene 2 and shows just how fragile feelings are in the play.

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        Shakespeare often uses metaphors and similes to explore how a character is feeling or give an object more depth. He uses figurative language to help the reader understand the message he is trying to convey and for ease of imagination. Although both metaphors and similes are types of figurative language, they are slightly different in format.

        A metaphor is the more powerful of the two because it says something is as it implies radical change in the subject; the subject becomes the thing it is compared to. For example in Act 2 Scene 2, in the Capulet’s Orchard, Romeo advances ...

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